Wednesday, 30 December 2015

Making: DIY Christmas Tree

Before it gets too New Years-y around the internet, I thought I’d quickly post my DIY Christmas Tree, made from cardboard boxes, and perfectly petite for our small apartment living.

Being in Shanghai, Christmas is a little Christmassy, but considering that the day is a normal work day some traditions around town are just WESTERN traditions, so while there are Christmas Trees for sale here, they’re the plastic kind or they’re some strange kind of tree that aren’t pine trees, they just look like Christmas Trees do. I’m not sure, but they’re SUPER expensive. SO, throwing my thriftiness around isn’t hard… especially when there’s oodles of cardboard around.

Last year, I made the tree with these same strips of cardboard (groceries can arrive in very stable awesome cardboard boxes that you can return, use or recycle) but don’t think I posted it, and it was strung up with rope from a coat hanger, each piece was tied by threads and it looked like a large mobile … and I tried to do the same thing this year, but obviously you can’t replicate genius - ha - and it wouldn’t hang the same way!

Through the Craft’d Shanghai peeps, we had a DIY stamp kit, and it was so fun drawing up these little pine leaves on the tracing paper and etching out the stamp. I haven’t done lino cutting (as our art teacher called it) for years, so while Felix enjoyed a Mickey Mouse Christmas Movie I cut it out and then he did the stamping …

I used extra green washi tape for securing and while it’s not the greenest, realest, or prettiest tree, it’s certainly unique and was kitschy and quirky for our family for the month. Felix chose where it would go, right in a corridor to the bedrooms from the dining room, and luckily near the powerpoint. Clever cutie, and a good lesson for him about electricity and we probably spent every day together plugging it in and unplugging those lights. 3 years olds are sponges!

Hoping you’re having a relaxing week between the big festival days, again, being in Shanghai it’s so weird to see everything carry on as normal… but equally as strange seeing people’s beach photos on social media while it’s coffee & rugged up in jackets season here!